Posted on 10/26/2007 12:49:23 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Some won’t fight, some can’t fight in snow: the problems that face Nato
There are 38 countries with troops in Afghanistan. Co-ordinating them is not easy, General Dan McNeill tells our correspondent
Anthony Loyd
A clearly defined mission; troop strengths and structures composed to fit the task; consolidated public will; the generation of mass and precise execution of force: these are some of the principles of war stated as necessary for victory by the greatest military thinkers of our age.
They all seem dangerously absent in Afghanistan, where General Dan McNeill commands a disparate force of 40,000 Nato troops drawn from 38 nations, each with a different agenda and a varying preparedness to fight.
For one of America’s most senior generals, with experience in counter-insurgency going back to a tour with the Special Forces in Vietnam in 1969, as well as a previous command in Afghanistan, it is difficult to think of a more invidious post — other than that of his comrade in Iraq, General David Petraeus. Yet while General Petraeus is fighting to stave off defeat, General McNeill is fighting for time, the key force with which to hold and invigorate the Afghan people’s support until their country’s security forces are fit to take over the Nato role.
He is the first to admit that he does not know how fast the clock is ticking.
“Can we enjoy that time and have the will of both people, indigenous and the people of the constituent members of the alliance?” he said during an interview with The Times at Nato headquarters in Kabul. “I don’t know the answer to that question.”
The hindrances to his task are enormous, and are represented in part by a coloured checklist framed on the wall of his office. Beside a list of each Nato nation contributing to the Afghan mission are columns denoting their caveats on an array of potential tasks. Some countries, including the US and Britain, seem prepared to do most things that they may be asked. Others are flanked by a patchwork of yellow and red marking.
Yellow denotes that they may consider an operational request from General McNeill once their chief of defence staff or defence ministry has been consulted; red is a straightforward “No, never”. And these are just the basic caveats: there are hundreds filed in total, making the alliance resemble more of a pushme-pull-you co-operative rather than a unified fighting force.
Nato officials admit that some nations will not allow their troops to be involved in direct fighting with the Taleban; others will not operate in the snow. Some refuse to be deployed anywhere near the south or east of the country, where combat is fiercest; others refuse even to patrol at night. Some will fly here but not there; some detain prisoners but others refuse to. The list seems endless.
Using such a force seems akin to halting a time bomb with a Rubik’s Cube built into the fuse assembly. Carl von Clausewitz, the 19th-century military theorist from whom most advanced Western nations draw their war doctrine, would have a fit. “I think he’d say, ‘You’re having some tactical success. I think you’d have greater success if some of the restraints were lifted from you,” General McNeill said.
If Nato is divided, so too is the enemy. Once a composite, predominantly Pashtun force with a cohesive chain of command, since their overthrow in 2001 the Taleban has emerged as a spangled, loose-knit merger of groups hostile to the Karzai Government.
In the south of the country Mullah Omar maintains a weakened control over former Taleban commanders, madrassa students, poppy barons and impoverished fighters disaffected with Kabul’s corruption.
In the east American forces fight tribesmen affiliated to the Haqqani family, old-time jihadists with an ultra-fundamentalist ideology and al-Qaeda support.
Further north the insurgents are predominantly under the command of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose radical Hezbi-i-Islami party brought catastrophe to Kabul during the civil war of the 1990s.
No factions are mutually exclusive or indivisible, and all can be joined in turn by opportunist groups.
Despite their fragmented nature, General McNeill doubted that the insurgent forces were any less ambitious in their hopes than when the Taleban had first ascended to power more than a decade ago. “I don’t think they are any more modest than they were before,” he said, “and I think you’d have to assume that includes Kabul . . . I would not be surprised to hear a moderate’s statement that they want the whole kit and caboodle.”
Reports have surfaced recently in international and local papers concerning secret talks between President Karzai’s Government and the Taleban, the latest in a long line charting covert negotiations to bring an end to the conflict.
Credibly sourced, they referred to a tentative list of Taleban demands including the release of prisoners, control of ten southern provinces and a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. While acknowledging the need to negotiate with insurgents, General McNeill was critical of the timing of the reports.
“I don’t think it is helpful to the alliance,” he said. “I think it gives people false expectations and I believe it causes some people to think that a solution is imminent, and I don’t see it that way. I’d be disingenuous if I thought some solution was imminent. I don’t.”
Undermined by the divided nature of the insurgents, the credibility of negotiations is further shadowed by the precedent of Musa Qala, where British commanders and Afghan officials struck a disastrous deal with the Taleban last year.
The British agreed to withdraw their besieged troops from the town so long as the Taleban did the same. The Taleban returned to the town within 72 hours. It remained an insurgent sanctuary to this day, something that Nato troops in Helmand had since paid a price for, General McNeill said.
Which leaves the general reliant, for the time being, on his more trusted Nato elements to fight the counterinsurgency, while trying to utilise the more timorous units as best he can.
“We have to do what we can when we can do it,” he said, “knowing that the clock runs out and the last page comes up in the counter one day.”
How the UN would fight a war (IF it were ever to fight for anything, other than perks)
Today’s NATO, as functional as tits on a bore hog...
Sort of like going to war with an accordion....
Our staunch allies, the Brits, don’t seem so staunch after all, in Iraq or Afghanistan.
At least it is a US commander in charge...
Post 5 was meant for river, vice sand. Sorry about that.
“Our staunch allies, the Brits, don’t seem so staunch after all, in Iraq or Afghanistan.”
Quote
Beside a list of each Nato nation contributing to the Afghan mission are columns denoting their caveats on an array of potential tasks. => Some countries, including the US and Britain, seem prepared to do most things that they may be asked. <= Others are flanked by a patchwork of yellow and red marking.
Undermined by the divided nature of the insurgents, the credibility of negotiations is further shadowed by the precedent of Musa Qala, where British commanders and Afghan officials struck a disastrous deal with the Taleban last year.
The British agreed to withdraw their besieged troops from the town so long as the Taleban did the same. The Taleban returned to the town within 72 hours. It remained an insurgent sanctuary to this day, something that Nato troops in Helmand had since paid a price for, General McNeill said.
Couple that with their pullout from Basra in southern Iraq and they seem rather timid in their commitment to me. They may agree to do most anything but how reliable is their persistence and judgement.
Before castigating the operation in Basra, you would be well served to read Michael Yon’s dispatch about his time in Basra recently with the Brits. Hecomes right out and says they are doing the right thing by pulling back into garrison operations (not pulling out like the media wants us to beleive) and that the Iraqi’s have a handle on the area. http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/resistance-is-futile.htm
Sounds like a unionized army.
if NATO won’t send troops ...why shoud the US support NATO?..
just like the UN...the US should stop funding this anti-american organizaiton and pull out...let eurabia support and defend themselves!!!!
The thing he found most amusing was tea time. They might be tooling down the road in a convoy - 4 o'clock arrived, they all pulled over, "Tea break!" out came the little stoves and the kettles. 4:30 -- "Right, boys, war's back on" and they packed everything up and off they went.
Stove? LOL
I recently saw a documentary on TV (History Channel?) regarding "The Bridge Too Far"; one of many references I've seen or read over the years. This one - stated that one of the reasons for the failure of the mission was that the British ground troops and armor moving toward the bridge would stop and spend time celebrating in every town they liberated along the way, delaying arrival to assist the paratroopers. First time I've heard that. Any WWII historians have a comment?
Thanks for the link. I trust Yon.
Well, if they didn’t happen to have a primus stove (and a lot of them did, because dad has pictures), they just took half a gasoline jerry can, tossed in a handful of sand and a splash of gasoline, and put the kettle on.
Others have already replied to this, better than I would have. Basically it's a mis-perception deliberately created by the DBM. The same way that American soldiers are baby-killers.
Basra is doing very nicely
Any military not committed to fighting should be asked to leave the area as they are a soft target.
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